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  📍 📍 📍 📍 Hey friends. Welcome back to the eternal post-partum podcast. I'm your host, Kilah Lawson. And in today's episode, I'm going to break down four steps that you can take to overcome depression and anxiety without using medication so that you can truly fall in love with motherhood again.

I'm really excited about this episode. A lot of you guys know my journey and depression and anxiety really rings true to my heart and my experiences because I wrestled with these strongholds for over eight years before fully healing and overcoming.

And here's the reality. There are so many mothers who are struggling and the exact same ways that I did. And when we look at our society as a whole, we see that perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are on the rise. We see that women are experiencing depression and anxiety, like never before.

And what I've also observed is a lot of women are just like me, you know, we may have seasons where we're feeling okay. But then we have seasons where we quote unquote "slip" back into depression or we're wrestling with anxiety again. And you know, the truth of the matter is that so many women are experiencing the long lasting impact of these mental health strongholds.

This is again, why I feel so passionate about supporting mothers, through the infinite chapters of postpartum. This is why you guys will hear me emphasize over and over again

just how important support is not only in the first few weeks postpartum or even the first couple of years postpartum, but why we need to be supporting moms through the infinite chapters of postpartum.

So let's take some time to really break down what depression and anxiety can look like. I realize that there are mothers out there who may not even realize that they're dealing with the strongholds of depression and anxiety, and you guys are going to hear me reference depression and anxiety as strongholds.

And I shifted my language for a reason. Um, with a person who has a degree in psychology, you know, it's very easy for me to reference depression and anxiety as mental illness. But I think that kind of shifting the way that we are addressing these issues. Is going to fit in beautifully with the way that I approach overcoming these issues, because I I'm just going to be honest. I'm coming against every single thing that mainstream has taught us about depression and anxiety.

For a very long time, we've been taught that there's nothing that we can do to prevent mental illness.

We've been told that it's linked to genetics.

We've been told that there's nothing that you can do to avoid it. And it makes women feel helpless and hopeless when we approach mental illness from that standpoint. And thankfully there's a ton of new information that's coming out that acknowledges epigenetics and its relationship to mental illness.

And what epigenetics does is that it gives us a better picture of how behaviors and environment can cause changes to the way that our genes work.

So it no longer becomes doom and gloom like. Um, you know, you're experiencing depression, this runs in your family. There's nothing that you can do about it. And once we understand how epigenetics works, once we understand how the body works, we can truly begin to take steps to overcome our depression and anxiety.

And that's what I want to shed light on today.

So again, let's first explore what depression and anxiety often looks like in the life of a mother. For me personally, my depression actually looks different depending on each season. There were some seasons where I just felt completely unmotivated to do anything I'm telling you. I could barely wake up to take a shower. I could barely handle day-to-day tasks, like getting the kids ready and helping them to brush their teeth and preparing meals.

 

The stronghold of depression has the ability to suck every single ounce of energy out of your body that you probably don't even have because you're a mom doing all of the things anyway. But when it comes to depression, So many women are experiencing that lack of energy, that bone gnawing exhaustion. I remember just feeling a sense of extreme hopelessness and constantly thinking to myself that my kids deserved a better mom and I wanted so badly to change.

I wanted so badly to do better, but I just could not pull myself out of the state that I was in. And I felt this overwhelming sense of guilt because I needed to be able to show up for my children in a way that I felt that they truly deserved. And I feel like a lot of moms can resonate to the things that I dealt with.

A lot of us when it comes to motherhood, truly seek to heal some of the inner childhood wounds that we've experienced because our moms are our parents didn't show up for us in a way that we needed. And so we are seeking to kind of reconcile. Our childhood trauma with the way that we parent our children.

 

Or some of us grew up with the opposite experience where our mothers were present.

And we kind of look at our moms like heroes. Like I know for me, this was the case. Like I look at my mom and now that I'm an adult and I have my own children, I can look and see the ways where she probably was struggling. But as a child, I never realized just how overwhelming it could have been for her because. Her and I are alike in the fact that we both have five kids and. Um, my siblings and I are very close in age, so my mom had kids back to back just like me. And I often asked my mom like, mom, how did you do that?

And I know that my mom had way less support than I do as a mom. And so she kind of becomes a hero in my eyes and created like this baseline standard for what I wanted in my motherhood journey.

Like, have you ever just really thought, like, this is what it means for me to be my ideal self in motherhood, and you have this picture, but you're grappling and wrestling with the fact that, you know, here's the reality of where I am and here's where I want to be. And. It's just not matching up.

So when we're experiencing anxiety and when we're experiencing stress, depression, overstimulation, when we are experiencing all the things that prevent us from truly being able to love on our children, to pour in our children, to be present with our children. There becomes this morality conflict.

It's like, we know that we want to do better. We know that we should, we have this deep innate desire to just unconditionally love our kids, but then we're faced with the reality that there's something happening within my body that is preventing me from doing that. And again, it just turns into the cycle of guilt and then the cycle repeats itself and you're further sucked in to this mental stronghold and it begins to dominate your life.

And again, this stronghold can look differently for different people. It can include, you know, changes to your weight, either weight, gain, or weight loss. It can include trouble sleeping. It can include irritability. Um, postpartum rage definitely is as symptom of depression. When it comes to anxiety, anxiety also looked different for me in different seasons.

Like I remember when I first became a mom, when I had my first child. You know, all the things are kind of unknown. We have a baby and we are thrown into the wild and we're left to figure this out on our own. I can remember with my first feeling, very anxious about just like his wellbeing.

Like at night I would just stay up and watch his chest to make sure that he was still breathing. I was just very anxious about, you know, people coming around him. So that's what anxiety looked like for me when I first started having children. As I progress in my motherhood journey. Um, postpartum anxiety actually reflected and presented itself as, um, OCD. And what this looked like was me having the inability to even rest or relax in a space that wasn't like perfectly clean.

So again, this is interesting because in one season where I was experiencing depression. I had a, just lack of motivation to do anything at all. And in another season where I was experiencing anxiety, I had this urge and this desire to clean everything.

Like I could not settle unless the space that I was in was clean.

I also struggled with panic attacks. And the interesting thing for me was that my panic attacks were nighttime panic attacks and they often presented with night terrors.

And for me it always happened. Um, at the onset of sleep.

So again, anxiety can look differently depending on the season that you're in and depending on the person.

But Even though depression and anxiety can look differently for different people. One thing that I realize is when it comes to mothers and when it comes to women- these strongholds, truly rock us to our core.

And I touched on this earlier. We are literally wrestling with something that goes against who we say that we are and who we know ourselves to be.

And it puts us in a position a lot of times to really hate motherhood. Like I can remember for myself that I just wanted to get back to that person that I was before I started having kids because that person wasn't experiencing postpartum rage, that person wasn't irritable all the time.

That person wasn't tired all the time, that person wasn't lacking energy. Like I was able to get out and you know, go do things for myself that I loved and, I was truly able to embrace life's moments. And when I began to experience depression and anxiety, it really just prevented me from being able to enjoy motherhood and really just enjoy life in general. And the problem that I see with our society. Is that mothers are told that we can fix this issue that we have with the pill. And it comes from this entire notion that there's a chemical imbalance within your brain and the pill is going to help with the imbalance. Or we're told that you need therapy or we're told that you know, working out can help us with our depression because that's going to help release the oxytocin and

All the feel good hormones that our body is missing.

 

The problem with anti-depression and anti-anxiety meds is that they don't truly address the roots of they truly, that, that, that is that they don't truly address the root causes of depression and anxiety.

They mask symptoms. And not only do they mask symptoms, but they also produce new symptoms

and there's a lot of risks that come with taking these medications.

Moms become dependent on the medication. And when they try to come off of it, they experience withdrawal symptoms because it's a drug and it's an addicting drug and studies and research prove that certain types of medication actually cause more harm than good.

And the issue when it comes to therapy is again, therapy fails to address the full picture of why women are experiencing depression and anxiety. We may feel good after a therapy session,

We may benefit from the strategies That our therapist gives us to deal with the rage or the irritability, or even the trauma that might be causing some symptoms of depression and anxiety.

 

But therapy can only give us one small piece of the puzzle.

 

It's the same for what we hear. When, your doctor tells you, you know, you can work out in order to minimize your symptoms of depression or anxiety.

And if you do have a doctor like that, I appreciate that. I appreciate the doctors who are going to recognize, you know, that there are things that you can do outside of medication to help you with managing these symptoms. But. Like I said, it only gives us one piece of the puzzle. It doesn't give us the full picture for why we are experiencing these symptoms and it doesn't help us to come to deep restorative healing.

You know, you might go to the gym. Uh, to try to combat some of the symptoms that you're dealing with and simultaneously, as you're moving your body, you know, your brain is releasing these happy hormones that oxytocin that we talked about, but what happens when you leave the gym?

You might feel good in the gym, or you might even feel a good, you know, a couple hours after you leave the gym. But what happens when those hormones are no longer being released? What happens when you walk into your home and you realize that that break that you just took in order to better your mental health actually caused more problems and more stress because you stepped away from your responsibility load and you came back to an environment where your kids are on 10 and you know, the house is a mess because you decided to care for yourself.

So, what I need y'all to really understand is that we are only given temporary fixes or quick fixes or fixes that don't truly get to the root of the issue and help us to create a true lifestyle change and true healing that's going to set us up for a lifetime where depression and anxiety will no longer be a strong hold over our lives.

And this is really, really important because when I talk about my journey to overcoming depression and anxiety, There was a point in time where I started implementing practices that helped me to feel better all around. I felt good. I had gotten to a point where I had felt like I had never felt in my motherhood journey.

I was sleeping well, I was eating well. I was still wrestling with those nighttime panic attacks and night terrors. But I realized that that was pointing to more of a spiritual issue. And I will get into that a little bit later in the episode.

But even though I had gotten to a place in my journey where I was feeling good. And if I went to the doctor, they could no longer diagnose me with having depression or having anxiety. Even though I in a sense had overcame. Depression and anxiety still had a strong hold over my mind. I still had a strong hold over my life. And I recognized this over the last couple of years because when my husband began to come to me to talk to me about, you know, things that we could do with the children, them starting sports, them, starting football and us starting new things.

I immediately would kind of freeze in my mind and be hesitant to introduce anything new to our schedule. Or I was resistant of any change because I was fearful of quote unquote, slipping back in to depression. And this to me was an awakening and a realization that what I was dealing with Was not only something that correlated with the physical symptoms that had manifesting in my life for over eight years.

But I was also dealing with a spiritual stronghold.

And here's what I've realized. Like I grew up in the church. Most of y'all know that about me. I grew up in the church. So when it comes to issues like depression and anxiety, The type of environment that I grew up in often treats these topics like they're taboo topics. The church has completely ignored the physiological aspects that are connected to depression and anxiety, you might hear things like, oh, well you need to just pray and you don't have enough faith, but there's no true acknowledgement of the physiological components and how the Most High God created the mind and the body and the spirit and how all of those things interconnect.

And on the flip side, we're living in a society that might acknowledge, you know, some of those physiological aspects of why we experience depression and anxiety, but our society completely neglects the spiritual aspect of it all.

And so it's imperative for me in this season to begin to share with women how I truly overcame depression and anxiety, how I was delivered from depression and anxiety, how I received complete and total healing. I don't have to worry about slipping back into depression anymore.

And I want to equip you with this information because when it comes to health, I'm all about long lasting changes that are going to put you in the driver's seat of your health and stewarding your health.

So if you have any symptoms of illness that begin to creep into your life, you know exactly what it takes to combat those issues. And my body balance method is all about showing women how to do this from a holistic perspective, so that we don't only have just one small piece of the puzzle so that we have the full picture and so that we can truly steward our bodies properly so that we can come to healing.

And so that we can truly fall in love with motherhood and be more present with our children.

So the body balance method includes four steps. The first step is all about physical harmony. We have to pay attention to the physical aspects of our health that are contributing to symptoms of depression and anxiety.

So this is a step where I get to talking deep into the physiological aspects of the body and how our creator designed the body.

Our, our bodies were designed to be in balance. So when we are lacking balance in an area, then our bodies are going to tell us that, Hey, your body's lacking balance. And a lot of times that lack of balance within the body points directly to nutritional deficiencies, gut health and hormone imbalance.

And honestly, all three of those aspects of physical health are impacting each other. So nutritional deficiencies impact your hormones and your hormones impact your gut health and your gut health impacts your nutritional deficiencies and all of these, they kind of linked together.

They're working together. And once we begin to bring those aspects of health into balance, then you're going to see dramatic changes to your mental wellbeing.

And this is what I've had the opportunity to help dozens of women do. again, if I haven't stated it before, I'm a strong believer in the fact that we should be empowered with information, that's going to help us to take our health into our own hands. We are living in a world of information.

And the reality is that so many mothers are too exhausted or we're too tired to like go digging for the information.

So putting this information at your fingertips is the beginning step to overcoming depression and anxiety.

So, what I typically do when I'm working with moms is we go through this complete survey that basically helps me to understand where they are in their general health profiles.

So I ask a lot of questions regarding hormone health. I asked a lot of questions related to gut health. I ask a lot of questions to figure out, you know, are, are they experiencing postnatal depletion? And once I have this fuller picture, I'm able to share with them what the results are and truly break it down for them so that they can see for themselves areas where they are lacking.

And then I give guidance on what their areas of focus should be. And we began to work together towards change.

So the main goal, when it comes to physical body balance is helping you to understand how our creator designed the body so that you could begin to implement changes that are truly going to have a lifelong impact on your mental health.

Step two in the body balance method, really centers itself around mental harmony. And a lot of aspects of mental harmony are going to enter connect with physical harmony. I say this all the time. holistic wellness is all about physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and understanding how those four aspects of health contribute to total body wellness and understanding also how they interconnect with one another.

So when it comes to mental harmony, we have to understand how our hormones correlate with stress levels and how our hormones impact overstimulation and why our hormone imbalance is contributing to burnout.

One thing that we often do not talk about is, the dramatic changes of our hormones that, happen immediately after childbirth. And when we don't take the time to replenish and focus on hormone balance immediately postpartum, then some of those hormone levels never return back to normal and they impact us.

even decades after giving birth.

So step two in overcoming depression

really centers around reducing stress levels, combating overstimulation and overcoming burnout.

Step three in the body balance method- can you guess it, it's centered around emotional wellbeing.

We cannot overcome depression and anxiety

without addressing emotional trauma that is contributing to our symptoms. So for many newly postpartum moms that trauma could have resulted because of a negative birth experience that you had, or, um, a negative postpartum experience that you are currently going through.

Maybe it's the lack of support that you're dealing with. Maybe it's the fact that you are the default parent and everything falls into your lap. And there's a struggle between this dynamic between you and your partner that you just didn't expect since becoming a mother.

So all of these things have the potential to shape our emotional wellbeing. And we cannot break free from depression and anxiety. If we don't address them.

Part of this conversation involves highlighting the fact that we're feeling lonely in our motherhood journeys and

we've been stripped of the collectivism that helps us to rise in strength after childbirth. We've been stripped of being in spaces where we can share the things that we are going through and where we can validate one another and truly encourage one another.

We as mothers need that emotional support and encouragement. We as mothers need hands-on support.

We need a tribe. We need a village. We need people. We need companionship. We can not overcome depression and anxiety. If we are out here doing life alone. And I know that we are resistant to asking for help.

I know that we don't want to bother our friends and family because we don't want to inconvenience them, but we have got to get out of the mindset that tells us that we can. We have got to get out of the mindset that emphasizes individualism.

Feeling alone in motherhood is a scary place to be in. And we almost feel resentful because it's like, why should I have to take the steps contribute to my village or create my village and build my village. why should I have that responsibility?

Like we are already struggling as mothers and to have to do one more thing- . It feels overwhelming. It feels terrifying. And, and sometimes we have to navigate the fact that we've tried to do that before and people have failed us. But coming to emotional balance is vital for you overcoming depression.

And we have to really truly unpack all of the things that are contributing to emotional imbalance.

So set three and overcoming depression and anxiety is really working to bring our emotional state to balance. Lastly, we have step four. And step four in my body balance method is centered around spiritual health recovery.

And this aspect of health for me was the last piece to the puzzle. I shared with you guys earlier, how I was feeling good. I was not experiencing really any symptoms of depression and anxiety, but there was still a strong hold over my mind and the release and the deliverance of that strong hold did not happen for me until last year. And I came to the realization that all of this time, I haven't been teaching and preaching that every aspect of health matters, but the foundational piece and the core component of really acknowledging how spiritual wellbeing fits into all of this.

That's what was missing for me.

 

This is an aspect of health that is completely missing from the world and I feel like that even as believers, we don't understand the depths of the spiritual realm and how the enemy is literally seeking to destroy us. Like I look back on my battle with depression and he literally was trying to take me out. There were times in my motherhood walk where I did not want to be alive because I felt that my kids would be better off without a mom who was wrestling and struggling every single day with these components of mental health.

So it is truly my belief that if we are going to overcome depression and anxiety, we have to understand how our mental health correlates with the spiritual realm and what we are coming against. We have to understand why and how the enemy has access to our minds.

And we have to know how to engage in the warfare that is going to keep the enemy at bay.

 

We also have to be willing to take accountability over any aspects of our life and wellbeing that is allowing the enemy to have access to our lives.

For a very long time in my walk, as a believer, I was completely oblivious to the rules of the spiritual realm. For a long time I've been coasting through my life as a believer. I've I'm just gonna put it. I'm just going to put it, frankly. I've been lukewarm in my walk. Um, part of that is connected to the things that I dealt with regarding my mental health. Um, there was a point where I had let, uh, almost bitterness and anger dominate my life, the bitterness and anger. Um, you know, from childhood trauma or trauma that I experienced in my adult life or the trauma that I experienced after I had my last baby. All of that resentment, all of that bitterness, all of that anger presented, um, a ground for the enemy to have access to my life. And if we dig a little bit further, I was at a point really angry with the Most High or maybe not even angry, but just very confused as to why. Hi, I couldn't connect in my mind like how I knew that he can heal.

Like I know that he can heal. I knew that he could pull me out of this depression. I knew that he could rid me of anxiety. And I had been begging and pleading him for so long. God, please take this away. I was asking the father to take this from me for so long and. It contributed to my sense of hopelessness.

I didn't understand. Why He wouldn't take it away. And I was wrestling with the scriptures in the Bible where it says, if we draw near to the Most High then He'll draw near to us. And I was wrestling with that because it's like, I can barely function. I can barely do anything. And you expect me to like draw near to you.

Like, can you just show grace and get me out of this? But I look back at all of this retrospectively and I fully realize that had I not gone through what I went through, I now would not be able to prepare, teach and equip women to overcome depression and anxiety from this aspect, an aspect that acknowledges spiritual wellbeing. From the angle that encourages women to truly lean into the Most High and to truly count it joy when we are facing trials and tribulations. Because it's giving us an opportunity to explore and to an examine where in our life we can be perfected and made more holy and my battle with depression. Gave me the opportunity to do that.

And for a very long time, I didn't realize the opportunity that I had in front of me. And so when I be, when I completely surrendered and submitted and came into complete trust, And truly just leaned into my Heavenly Father. It's when I experienced true deliverance from the stronghold that had been dominating my life for years.

And another aspect to this is. If I would have been healed from depression and anxiety at the time where I was asking the Most High to pull me out of it. I would not have come into the practical information that teaches women how to steward their bodies and maintain their bodies in a way where we are truly living healthy and thriving. And for a long time, I just saw it. And this is what happens when you view depression and anxiety from just one aspect. It's important for us to connect the four aspects of wellbeing because those four aspects, point to physical and spiritual stewardship over our temples. And we, as believers are called to steward our bodies. So in a way I was not ready and I was not prepared for the healing. Like let's say that I had been healed that I had overcome depression and anxiety. But from there, I wouldn't have had that information and the knowledge to be able to maintain my healing.

So if those symptoms were to creep back up again, I would've had no idea of how to combat it. So the perfection and the being made holy and being made more complete, it not only related to the spiritual aspect of my health, but

It also relates to the physical aspect of stewardship. A lot of times when we are facing a mental or a spiritual stronghold, it can point directly to other strongholds that we're dealing with, like on a physical level, like if you're struggling with your nutrition or if you're struggling to work out, if you're struggling to be a proper steward of your temple. Then all of that is interconnecting with your mental wellbeing and also your spiritual wellbeing.

 

So step four in overcoming depression and anxiety. It's a step that's often missed, but I truly believe that in order to fully overcome

and break the strongholdthat's been dominating your life. That it's important that you reclaim and recover your spiritual health.

 

We are entering a season where I just know that so many women are going to commit to the change that's needed to reclaim their health in every aspect. So that we truly can fall in love with motherhood again, so that we can be present with our children so that we can overcome burnout, stress, and fatigue so that we can break free of the strongholds that have been dominating our lives for so long and preventing us to walk in the purpose

at the most high God has given us in this season.

If you want to work with me in reclaiming your health in every single aspect so that you can overcome depression and anxiety. I want to invite you just to send me a DM on Facebook. I'm going to link my Facebook profile in the show notes, but you can also search my name on Facebook.

It's Kilah Lawson. K-i-l-a-h L-a-w-s-o-n

I'm also going to be linking in the show notes, our amazing Facebook community, so that you can join a group of like-minded women who are going to encourage you in reclaiming collectivism and wellness through the infinite chapters of your postpartum journey.

I'll see you on the next episode.